When American Horror Story: Asylum debuted October 17 on FX, it was yet another show about moderately attractive people getting the crap scared out of them. But AHS's second season also boasts a completely new plot and a mostly new cast — all set in a fictitious 1960s Boston insane asylum.

It's not the first time a Boston-area asylum has ended up on the big screen (Shutter Island was filmed at Medfield State Hospital), but in terms of outright horror, it's tough to invent anything more messed up than what actually happened at Massachusetts's network of public mental hospitals. From Waltham's Fernald State School (where developmentally disabled boys were fed breakfasts laced with radioactive material as part of a 1940s MIT-led experiment) to the Belchertown State School (which closed in 1992 amid accusations of overcrowding, squalor, and patient abuse), our state's institutional memories are riddled with sordid tales of deplorable physical conditions, sexual misconduct, and cruelly unusual torture masquerading as "treatment."

Even in disrepair, these asylums still haunt our imaginations. The evocative contradictions between the buildings' majestic grandeur and their brooding decay permeates a pop-up photography exhibit this month at Zuzu in Cambridge by Jason Baker, whose book series "Abandoned" and "Urban Decay" document his explorations of New England's eeriest asylums.

And it's probably no surprise that, even as the rise of Big Pharma and privatized mental health care have spirited these institutions away, locals have grown up believing that many of these sites are haunted. They are: if not by ghosts, then by the twisted and shameful legacy of what happened in these places. We visited four of the most notorious abandoned hospitals in the state to get the backstories of what transpired within their walls . . . and the scoop on what is alleged to lurk in their ruins today.

Review: The Haunting in Connecticut It's no shocker that The Haunting in Connecticut — a film inspired by the "true tale" of a family who stir up a nest of spooks when they move into a former mortuary — offers many a groan-worthy moment.

Review: The House of the Devil Have you walked near a college campus lately? You might notice that the ’80s are creeping into fashion, the way the ’70s did a few years back, and with the same lack of irony. It’s happening in cinemas, too — something that’s not entirely unwelcome when it comes to the horror genre.

Searching for Stephen King In 1983, Doubleday published yet another book from the increasingly renowned Stephen King, whose Carrie and The Shining (to name just two) were already popular books and movies.

RESIDE: AT HOME WITH BERTIL JEAN-CHRONBERG | March 13, 2013 Green home design is still building momentum, but it's not a new concept. Consider the Harvard Square home that Bertil Jean-Chronberg, GM and beverage director of South End hotspot the Beehive, shares with his wife, Tracy.

THE EDMMYS | February 26, 2013 We just wrapped award-show season — so to prevent withdrawal, we asked some top DJs, representing diverse sounds, to nominate favorites within some creative categories.

RESIDE: AT HOME WITH MICHAEL NAVARRETE | February 22, 2013 In food and fashion, presentation is key. So chef Michael Navarrete of the Regal Beagle and his girlfriend, stylist Laura Pritchard, are the perfect pair to decorate this airy East Boston loft.